“we’ll never be able to fully understand fusion because it’s so alien!” listnen,, I didn’t spend all those years at Homestuck University getting my degree in troll romance, m y studies in fanon, to be told THIS
So somebody on my Facebook posted this. And I’ve seen sooooo many memes like it. Images of a canvas with nothing but a slash cut into it, or a giant blurry square of color, or a black circle on a white canvas. There are always hundreds of comments about how anyone could do that and it isn’t really art, or stories of the time someone dropped a glove on the floor of a museum and people started discussing the meaning of the piece, assuming it was an abstract found-objects type of sculpture.
The painting on the left is a bay or lake or harbor with mountains in the background and some people going about their day in the foreground. It’s very pretty and it is skillfully painted. It’s a nice piece of art. It’s also just a landscape. I don’t recognize a signature style, the subject matter is far too common to narrow it down. I have no idea who painted that image.
The painting on the right I recognized immediately. When I was studying abstraction and non-representational art, I didn’t study this painter in depth, but I remember the day we learned about him and specifically about this series of paintings. His name was Ad Reinhart, and this is one painting from a series he called the ultimate paintings. (Not ultimate as in the best, but ultimate as in last.)
The day that my art history teacher showed us Ad Reinhart’s paintings, one guy in the class scoffed and made a comment that it was a scam, that Reinhart had slapped some black paint on the canvas and pretentious people who wanted to look smart gave him money for it. My teacher shut him down immediately. She told him that this is not a canvas that someone just painted black. It isn’t easy to tell from this photo, but there are groups of color, usually squares of very very very dark blue or red or green or brown. They are so dark that, if you saw them on their own, you would call each of them black. But when they are side by side their differences are apparent. Initially you stare at the piece thinking that THAT corner of the canvas is TRUE black. Then you begin to wonder if it is a deep green that only appears black because the area next to it is a deep, deep red. Or perhaps the “blue” is the true black and that red is actually brown. Or perhaps the blue is violet and the color next to it is the true black. The piece challenges the viewer’s perception. By the time you move on to the next painting, you’re left to wonder if maybe there have been other instances in which you believe something to be true but your perception is warped by some outside factor. And then you wonder if ANY of the colors were truly black. How can anything be cut and dry, black and white, when even black itself isn’t as absolute as you thought it was?
People need to understand that not all art is about portraying a realistic image, and that technical skills (like the ability to paint a scene that looks as though it may have been photographed) are not the only kind of artistic skills. Some art is meant to be pretty or look like something. Other art is meant to carry a message or an idea, to provoke thought.
Reinhart’s art is utterly genius.
“But anyone could have done that! It doesn’t take any special skill! I could have done that!”
Ok. Maybe you could have. But you didn’t.
Give abstract art some respect. It’s more important than you realize.
Ad Reinhart did some great comics about interpreting art too
Also a lot of paintings like this will not get properly captured by photography at all. There’s definitely a lot of pretentious bullshit made to pander to fuckwit rivh snobs, but there is also a lot of stuff that may look simple at first glance, but is actually quite complex and took a lot of skill and hard work
Shiro wasn’t even back on Earth for 24 hours before he was ripped back right into space. In one half day, Shiro got to
breathe his home planet’s air
feel the sun on his skin
feel the ground under his feet
hear natural flowing water
see natural flowing water
smell natural flowing water
touch natural flowing water
smell the wind
Only to have it taken away again later that day. Which is why the line, “I’ve been locked up by aliens for a year. This is nothing!” breaks my heart every time. He’s just so appreciative of freedom in general. He’s genuinely grateful to be anywhere but Galra captivity.
me @ my bad eyebrow:
i'm sick of carrying your lazy ass... your sister works tirelessly to support this family and u think you can just keep cruising through life....get a real job....there is no 'I' in 'eyebrows'...except phonetically
unpopular opinion: safe spaces have to exclude some people to be safe spaces because otherwise those the people in that space need to hide from can literally just enter at any time. An all inclusive liberal “safe space” isn’t safe at all
R.I.P. The 2976 American people that lost their lives on 9/11 and R.I.P. the 48,644 Afghan and 1,690,903 Iraqi and 35000 Pakistani people that paid the ultimate price for a crime they did not commit
this is the only september 11th post I’m reblogging
New York Police Arrest Woman During News Interview for Speaking Out
In a chilling display of police intimidation, Rochester police dressed in riot gear snatched a woman away as she was conducting an on-camera interview with a news reporter during a protest against police abuse in New York Saturday night.
“I’m not going to hit anybody, I’m not going to shoot anybody. I’m going to speak to you, I’m going to use my words. I’m going to articulate myself because the message needs to be heard, the message is important. We don’t need this exact format, we need us to come out in numbers, we need more Rochesters.”
Why do they always come at us like we’re resisting they didn’t even read her her rights they just jumped on her like she pulled a out broomstick and was about to leap into the air
So if any of y'all wanted to see what a REAL infringement on free speech looks like, here you go. This is some fucking bullshit. And she’s been charged with “disorderly conduct” somehow
